


A Question Yet to Be Asked

by TheLilyoftheValley



Category: Gotham (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-19
Updated: 2017-03-19
Packaged: 2018-10-07 17:38:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10365939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLilyoftheValley/pseuds/TheLilyoftheValley
Summary: Later in Gotham's future, when all the Rogues are out to play, Commissioner Gordon sits down with an old, ex-friend and asks him how he went from an optimistic E. Nigma to a murderous Mister E. (Canon through season 2 episode 11.)





	

Commissioner Gordon watched as Batman pushed a beaten and bloodied body into a small cell. The criminal would stay there until morning, when the trucks from Arkham would pick up their escaped patient. Gordon stared at the mess of papers on his desk, feeling utterly ashamed. He felt this way every time the ex-Forensics Tech was dragged into the GCPD.

“You’ll never find them Dark Knight!” the criminal screeched as he threw himself against the cell door. Batman just turned his back to him and walked away. It only succeeded in enraging the criminal further. “You think you can defeat a mind such as mine, detective?” Nygma continued to scream. “I am the Riddler, and you’ll grow old and die before you find the rest of my hostages!”

Jim watched as Ed hopped onto the only bed in the cell. He pulled his knees to his chest and preceded to rock back-and-forth, his good eye closed, as if he was trying to shut out the world around him. Ed started muttering to himself, and Jim lip-read a few words. Everything is okay… never defeat me… just like my father. Jim’s heart fell at the sight.

As the old saying went, “Beware the quiet ones.” Ed was a psychotic killer with no regard for the value of human life. It felt weird to say it, to even think it. Jim could still remember the innocent and optimistic Lab Tech that loved to speak in riddles. The Lab Tech that was always curious and put his work first, yet always had everyone’s best interest at heart. He also remembered the doormat, the socially awkward Tech that many officers joked about behind Ed’s back. At the time, Jim had shrugged it off, thinking that Ed could handle himself, never imagining that the ever-smiling Ed could brutally murder anyone.  
It started after the disappearance of Kristen Kringle and the showdown with Galavan. Lee had told him that Ed was acting funny; gone for days at a time only to come back grinning like a madman; solving fewer and fewer cases, especially those with a question mark insignia; and muttering riddles under his breath as he doodled advanced machinery on a sheet of paper, only to quickly hide it if you asked him what it was. It went on for a long while; Ed was never gone long enough to cause suspicion. But it soon got worse; Ed would walk around and ask random cops at random times a riddle. If they could not solve it, they would disappear the next day, a letter of resignation on the Captain’s desk as the only evidence of their disappearance. If the cops were able to solve the riddle, Ed would ask them more until they could not answer anymore, and they suffered the same fate. Those that could answer all of the riddles correctly only succeeded in infuriating Ed, and their fate, few as they were, were gruesome and public. One time, a cop was shredded outside of city hall, his body parts erupting over a press conference the mayor had been having. Another time, Cat had run to Gordon to tell him about some cop she had found in an alleyway. They arrived at the crime scene, only to find the body bent into the top half of a question mark, and the brain of the victim as the dot. “Idiot” and “Moron” had been written around the victim in green paint.

“What the hell is going on and why the hell is this killer targeting all of our smartest cops?” Harvey had exclaimed after first seeing the body.

“We don’t even have a name for this guy,” Jim remembered saying.

“’Cause the guy obsessed with chopping up our family like cows in a slaughterhouse totally deserves a pretty little name,” Harvey had spat back. “I got plenty of names for this guy, I just can’t announce them in public.”

Jim had ignored him and had started inventing names for the killer. “The Question Mark Killer, the Mystery Murderer,…”

“The Riddler.”

Jim remembered him and Harvey turning to Ed, who was examining the body at the time. He had looked at them with a strange fear in his eyes. “This killer is killing in ways I’ve never seen before, and yet he only leaves a riddle as his calling card. ‘Riddler’ seems to fit him…” Ed had quickly gone back to examining the body.

Harvey had led Jim away from where Ed was. “I think he knows more than he’s letting on,” Harvey had said as he glanced over his shoulder at the Lab Tech.

Jim had scoffed at that remark. “Come on, you think Ed knows something about this guy. Ed’s not a person I could imagine in the criminal underworld.”

“Remember when his girlfriend disappeared without a trace?” Harvey had held up one finger. “Remember when you woke up and found him singing show tunes with Penguin?” He held up another finger. “Remember the time he went on that ‘hunting retreat’ and came back that day covered in blood, claiming that ‘the deer was harder to kill than he thought,’ only to head back out with us not five minutes later to help investigate a body that had been torn apart by ‘trained attack dogs?’” Harvey waved his fingers in Jim’s face. “Or remember that just a second ago, he was helping us name the killer like a good little boy? Jim, there’s something going on here, and I think it has something to do with Ed.”

Later that afternoon, Harvey had cornered Ed in his workspace. “Have you solved the previous riddles yet?” Harvey had asked him.

Ed had stammered out an excuse as Harvey continued to ask questions about why Ed hadn’t been able to solve those specific cases. Harvey then asked Ed, after a barrage of questions and a moment of realization, if he “knew” anything about the Riddler. Ed had lifted his gaze from the ground and, grinning maniacally, had asked Harvey a riddle. Harvey, furious at Ed’s sudden apathy, shoved him down and yelled at him to just shut up and do his job, as he was useless at everything else.

That night, Harvey had woken up in a small room covered in green question marks and complex puzzles.

“Good evening, Detective Bullock.” Ed’s voice had poured out of hidden speakers, smooth and unworried. “In order to get out of here alive with what little intelligence you possess, you must complete all of my riddles in ten minutes. Your time starts… NOW!”

Harvey had bolted over to the first puzzle, but within a second, he had known he could not solve it. He had tried to complete the other puzzles, but had been unable to. Ed had laughed and insulted Harvey’s intelligence.

“I’ve seen wild primates, hell, even bacteria with more intelligence than you,” Ed had mocked as Harvey began to panic.

Harvey had demanded answers, but Ed only laughed at Harvey’s rage. At two minutes, Harvey (who only told this to Jim in a drunken stupor years later) had begun to cry and beg Ed to let him live, to not let him die trapped in a box with puzzles his brain could never solve, to not kill him over something he had no control over. Ed had continued to laugh.

“You’ve lasted much longer than the others Bullock,” Ed had remarked as Harvey had desperately looked for a way out. “The longest time someone lasted before begging for my mercy was four minutes. Congratulations! You’ve lasted eight minutes! Enjoy your final, precious two…”

At the fifteen second mark, Batman, still new at the job, had crashed through one of the walls, grabbed Harvey, and dove out the fifteen-story building before the room had exploded. The two of them had raced back to the GCPD and within a few hours, Edward Nygma, the Riddler, was dragged into the police station.

The first time Nygma had been dragged into the police station, he had been screaming out riddles and laughing hysterically as he nursed a broken arm. Jim, for the first time, saw Nygma in a different light. One look in the man’s manic brown eyes, and he could tell that Ed would be on the first truck to that horrible prison, Arkham Asylum. The rest was history.

Jim continued to watch Nygma as he rocked back-and-forth, muttering riddles to himself, an effort to cope with his stress. This time he had captured ten victims, a few councilmen included, and had placed them at ten separate locations, rigged on a timer to explode at dawn. Each room had specific yet complicated clues leading to the next room. Even though Batman had managed to capture the Riddler, there were still a few hostages left.

Jim rose from his desk and walked out the open office doors. Lee nearly ran into him. “Oh hey Jim,” she said, looking up from her notes, “what’s up?”

He sighed and nodded over to Ed. “Don’t you remember…”

She turned and looked over at Nygma, who had given up on his riddle speak and was currently leaning against the cell door and berating the closest cop about her lack of intelligence. Lee watched for a moment, then turned back to Jim, her eyes watery. “I know this sounds crazy Jim, but I wish we had the old Ed back.” She looked back down at her notes about a recent victim and rubbed at the corner of the paper. “The old, goofy-faced, innocent, smart Ed.”

“How are you people even cops? I’ve seen slobbering lunatics in Arkham with more cognitive prowess! What, did they just open the phonebook and hire the first ignoramus that answered their call?”

Jim and Lee watched as Harvey grabbed a nearby baton and whacked the cell bars, effectively driving Nygma away from the door. “One more word out of you,” Harvey threatened, “and you’ll get a second beating from something else with ‘bat’ in the first three letters!”

“I’m sorry, Detective,” Nygma said, leaning against the bars with an apologetic look on his face, “I didn’t know you knew how to spell. One look at you, and I assumed you would hop on my back, pick nonexistent lice out of my hair and eat them as a snack.”

Jim and Lee looked back at each other. After a moment of awkward silence, Jim slid his gaze to the floor. “I’m thinking about interrogating him for the locations of the rest of his hostages.”

Lee didn’t protest at the idea, but she did give Jim a confused look. She knew as well as any cop did that Nygma could have a knife at his throat, yet never give away the answers to his precious puzzles. “That’s not the real reason as to why you’re going to do it, is it?”

“Yeah,” Jim muttered as he brushed past Lee and headed for the interrogation rooms.

* * *

As he prepared one of the one of the interrogation rooms, he once again thought of Nygma. Why did Ed’s decent into madness bother him so much?

It could have been the fact that Edward Nygma hit way too close to home. When Jerome and the Maniax literally strolled into the police station and started massacring cops just for the hell of it, the GCPD building was turned into a madhouse of chaos and death. After Sarah Essen’s death, Jim swore that nothing like what the Maniax did would ever happen again, and nothing did for the longest time.

It wasn’t just Ed being so close to the house. He worked for the house, and he was a product of the house. He knew what, when, and how the GCPD conducted everything; every little piece of information he knew about his workplace was exploited so he could continue his crimes. It was shameful and disgusting to also acknowledge the fact that, somehow, the GCPD had fueled Ed’s insanity. Psychopaths had no connections to the real world or anything loving; Ed barely had any friends besides him and Lee, and more than once could Jim recall being rude or bossy to the Lab Tech. Ed had also been the joke of many police officers, and his helpful advice had been ignored more than once, unless it had something to do with the case at hand. Ed had nobody but him and Lee until Penguin came along.

It also bothered Jim that he didn’t help Ed when he had the chance. He wasn’t around Nygma that much when he had started showing the earliest signs. He only went to Ed when he needed help on a case, and by the time Nygma double-checked his work, Jim was out the door again. Lee was the only one with the most experience with Ed, yet he hid his insanity from her quite well. When he was dragged into the police station for the first time, Lee was totally shocked. She had run to the Captain, yelling that there was some kind of mistake, that Ed never would have done those things. The Captain had wordlessly led her to Nygma’s desk and opened the bottom-most drawer. Stacks of paper covered in riddles and designs for future deathtraps laid face-up in the drawer, arranged neatly in alphabetical order. Lee had cried herself to sleep that night, unable to believe that Ed could psychologically torture and brutally murder someone in cold blood.

A knock on the door brought Jim back to reality. “Come in,” he said gruffly.

Harvey pushed through the door, a large foam coffee cup in his hand. “You know I normally say this, but I really mean it this time. This is a lost cause.” He took a large gulp of his coffee. “You know how Nygma is with his puzzles. He’ll crap bats if you ask him for the answers.”

Jim leaned back in the interrogator’s chair and crossed his arms. “I just want to give Batman some help, that’s all.”

Harvey gently placed his coffee cup on the small table. He leaned over and looked Jim dead in the eyes. “That’s not why you’re doing this, are you?”

Jim remained expressionless as Harvey continued talking. “You’re going to do this so you can talk to Nygma, ask him what happened, what snapped inside that smartass mind of his to make him start offing people like pieces on a chess board.”

Jim looked away. Harvey could take a random guess at what Jim wanted to do and he would be 90% right. “What did happen Harv?” Harvey looked back at his coffee cup. “One moment he was one of our best, the next, a murderer hiding right under our noses.”

Harvey shrugged, picked up his drink, and took another long gulp from it. He stood silent for a moment before speaking. “I don’t know, but one thing’s for sure,” he said, “you’re not going to get a straight answer from him, no matter what you ask or threaten him with.” Harvey headed for the door. “If you need any help, just scream and flail around like a drunken ballerina that was just pushed out of an airplane at 30,000 feet. I’ll be on the other side of the window with Lee.”

* * *

Jim remained expressionless as two burly male cops forced a struggling Nygma into the chair opposite of him. Nygma glared at the cops as they handcuffed his arms and legs to the chair. Then, surprisingly, he grinned. “Riddle me this,” he began, his voice calm and cool, ‘”What force and strength cannot get through, I with a gentle touch, can do. And many in the street would stand, were I not a friend at hand.’ What am I?”

One of the cops spit in Nygma’s face. He leaned into Ed’s face, eyes burning with barely controlled anger. “That’s for what happened to Mike, Riddle freak!”

Ed’s smile grew as he blinked the spit out of his eyes. “Now tell me, was he the one who fell through my enlarged paper shredder, or the one whose choices killed his family, causing him to commit suicide?”

The cop’s face darkened for a second, then his fist shot out and socked Nygma across the face. “How could you smile at that, you worthless piece of-”

“ENOUGH!” Jim yelled, as he bolted up from his chair and pushed the cop back with his arm.

The cop didn’t fight Jim, he just glared at the hysterical Nygma, whose boyish laugh echoed throughout the small interrogation room. Jim looked the young cop in his eyes. “Just let it go.”

The furious cop followed the other cop out the door, but not before spitting at Nygma again. “Scum,” he muttered as he slammed the door shut.

Silence reigned for a moment before Ed spoke. “I knew the GCPD was desperate for cops, but I didn’t know you were hiring camels and mules.”

Jim said nothing and sat calmly back down in his chair. Ed cut a pathetic sight; his green suit was torn and filthy, and in certain spots dried cuts and bruises showed through. His right eye was swollen shut, his cheeks were black and blue, and his lips were cracked and bloody due to the amount of beatings he had received. Knowing how Ed loved to have the last word, Jim knew that he would receive many more before the sun came up.

Jim took a deep breath. “Ed, I need you to tell me where you put the rest of the hostages.”

Nygma’s face twisted into a mixture of shock and disgust. Anger quickly replaced the other two emotions as he hissed, ‘”What belongs to you, but others use it more than you?”’

Jim’s face hardened. “That is your name Ed, and all I want you to do is tell me-”

“Riddle me this-” Nygma shouted, straining against the restraints, an animalistic rage plastered his face.

 

Before either could finish their statements, a thump was heard from the other side of the window. “Stop speaking in riddles, you freak!” Harvey’s muffled voice shouted.  
Nygma turned to the tinted window and smirked. “Well hello!” he exclaimed, sounding like a showman at a circus. He then gasped in mock surprise. “Is that my favorite detective, Detective Bullshi-“

Jim slammed his hand down on the table, not scaring Nygma but successfully silencing him. The last thing Jim wanted was Nygma dragging Harvey into the interrogation room by calling him his nickname among the Rogues.

Jim forced a smile onto his face and looked deep into Ed’s laughing eyes. “Ed, you can get yourself out of a lot more trouble if you just tell us where the rest of the hostages are.”

Ed’s smirk fell from his face as Ed went into what Jim called “Tunnel-vision Analyzation.” Ed could be hit by a truck and put in the hospital, but his first thought would always be on the problem he was focused on (and had yet to solve). Ed leaned forward and lowered his voice to a point where only Jim could hear it. “Riddle me this, why do you ask me the same question every time I come in here when you know that I would never answer the question even if I had a gun to my head?”

Jim lost the smile and put on his best poker face. “Let’s look at this logically Ed. You’ve been caught, and you are heading off to Arkham as soon as the transport trucks get here at dawn.” Jim nodded his head, as if his suggestion was Nygma’s only option. “If you were to tell us where the rest of the hostages are, you could shorten your sentence and time in Arkham, allowing you to join back into normal society at a quicker pace.”

Ed leaned back and seemed to weight his options. Jim would have openly thanked the heavens had Ed not been watching. Thank God, he’s starting to understand that giving the answers doesn’t mean the end of the world.

“You didn’t call me in here to get the answers and the hostages, Jim Gordon.” Ed’s expression was serious as he looked into Jim’s eyes. “You want to know what happened to make me like this.”

Jim hid his shock as best he could. “Ed, do not stall away from the question-“

“I saw you watching me out of the corner of my eye, Gordon. Not to mention, that you prepared a special interrogation room for me with the cameras turned off.” Ed shifted in his chair and nodded to where the hidden cameras were usually hidden. “The miniscule, red recording light isn’t on, and-“he nodded toward the hidden window- “only Lee and Harvey are here to hear my ‘confession.’”

Jim ground his teeth together. Damn him and his knowledge of the GCPD’s procedures. He took a deep breath and rose from his seat. “Fine Ed. Yes, I do want to know why you snapped.”

Ed’s smirk resumed its usual place on his face. “Just like all those idiots at the Asylum, thinking they can ‘help’ my mind if they figure out what caused me to ‘snap.’” He gave a short bark of laughter. “You’re as predictable and as stupid as they are!”

Jim could feel the rage flow through his body. “Why did you betray us?!” he yelled at the smirking man. “Why did you turn against your family and make us into playthings you could off whenever you wanted?! WHY DO YOU DO THE THINGS YOU DO?!”

Nygma’s face darkened. “I will tell you the same thing I tell every one of my ‘doctors.’ I will give you the answers over MY DEAD BODY!”

The room grew quiet for a moment before Jim spoke up again after his mind had a moment of clarity. “You think of yourself as an unsolvable puzzle Ed.” The green-suited man opened his mouth to speak, but Jim cut him off. “No Ed, you think of yourself as a puzzle and you would never give away the answers to the puzzle that you are. You refuse to tell anyone why you snapped because it would give everyone the ability to solve you-“ Jim sat on the table top and closed his eyes- “and a riddle that everyone knows is an enigma no more.”

Ed stared down at his lap, a furious expression on his face. Jim opened his eyes and sighed. He nodded at the hidden window and headed toward the door. “Fine, if you want to be taken back to your cell, I’ll get the officers-“

“I never wanted your pity.”

Jim stopped a foot from the door, barely able to believe what he had heard. He turned around slowly and stared at Ed. “Excuse me?”

Ed blushed, a simple reaction that told Jim that Ed was truly revealing a hidden and sensitive side of himself. “Don’t make me repeat myself, Gordon.”

Jim stepped over to the opposite side of the table cautiously. One wrong move could deny him an answer to a question that had cost him many nights of sleep. One wrong word and it would be miraculous if Ed ever spoke to him again. “I’m sorry Ed, but I have a hard time believing what you just said. Please, I just want you to repeat what you said to me a moment ago-“

“I. Never. Wanted. Your. Pity.” Nygma’s face twisted into a snarl. “Everyone in this godforsaken place treated me like trash, and so did you for the longest time.”

“And that’s why I befriended you, Ed.” Jim tried to figure out what to say in order to calm Ed down. He chose his next words carefully and spoke softly. “You needed someone to be by your side through your worst times.”

Ed’s face didn’t change and his words were laced with poison. “Where were you when Arnold Ross and his herd of bovine idiots bullied and humiliated me in front of the woman I loved? Where were you when I decided to stick up for Kristen Kringle against her abusive boyfriend?” Ed leaned toward Jim and glared straight into the Commissioner’s eyes. “Where were you when I started to fall down and lose my sanity?” Each word was spoken in a tone that was softer than silk.

For Jim, the words opened the wounds he had long ago sown shut. “Ed,-“he began, hoping he could turn the conversation away from the hurtful path it was headed down.  
“You wanted the answers, Jim Gordon, you’re going to get them.” Ed continued to glare into Jim’s eyes, not moving from his position in the chair. “I know why you befriended me. You wanted to ‘protect me’ and ‘guide me’ through the harsh world, but our friendship was nothing but a self-esteem boost for you. I, being safe and protected, made you feel as if you were actually doing your job correctly.”

Jim openly winced at that. Nygma continued on, dramatically moving his body to the rises and falls of his voice. “You never asked any personal questions about me or my family, you never made plans to spend any kind time together, and you had never visited my house until Cobblepot dragged you into it, where I nursed you back to health. The only time you talked to me while we were friends was if I could solve your case for you.” Ed leaned back in his chair, his body language challenging Jim to disagree with his statements. “So tell me, friend, why did I betray you and the GCPD?”

“You’re only half-right Ed,” Jim said as he tried to think of the right words that would help him speak the truth. “I did want to become your friend out of a desire to protect you, but I also knew that you could protect yourself. You saved Kristen’s life that day, and I couldn’t have been prouder that you attempt something so courageous. I wanted to be your friend because you truly needed a friend, and you needed to learn how beautiful a friendship could be. You had an inner strength that came about during times of crisis, something few people possess. You had nobody until Lee and I became your friends.”

Ed scoffed. “That’s right, you did invite me to your house once, when I was dating Kristen Kringle. That was when she wanted to double date with other people she knew and you didn’t even bother to show up on time, did you?”

“Ed, I was busy that night-“

“Of course!” Ed interrupted. Jim knew that there was no way he could stop a full on (and infamous) Riddler Rant now. “You couldn’t even set aside time for one of your ‘best friends.’ Jim, you could care less about me, and it was evident from the way you avoided me unless you needed me to do your detective work!” Ed took a second and breathed in a deep breath in an effort to calm himself down.

Ed gave an evil smile as his eyes drifted off to the side, signaling Jim that Ed was remembering something. “Kristen was the same way too. I heard her once say to your wife that I didn’t possess a single ounce of danger in me. I guess you could say she found out very quickly that I was just as dangerous as that idiot Daughdry.”  
Jim sat down slowly in his chair. “What do you mean Ed?” Jim played the ‘Moron’ card, allowing Ed to think that he had the upper hand over Jim. Nobody knew what had happened to Kristen; nobody knew the exact amount of victims Ed had murdered, but if Jim could get him to confirm his suspicions…

“I murdered her Jim.”

The way Ed said it so plainly, so casually -as if it was normal for men to kill and hide their girlfriend’s body- made Jim sick to his stomach.

“I murdered her,” Ed repeated, as if to make the statement clearer. He stared into Jim’s eyes, and Jim could see tears well up in the corners of his eyes. It still did hurt Ed even after all these years, and it seemed she was the only victim he truly felt guilt for. “I strangled her to death whispering ‘I love you’ into her left ear. I cradled her lifeless body in my arms as I cried myself to sleep.” Tears slowly crawled their way down Ed’s face. “She was going to tell on me Jim. She had to go.”

Jim took a deep breath. The old Ed was so close, yet Jim could barely hold back the tears himself. He had to get the old Ed back, even if he was going to bawl his eyes out later. “Ed…”

“I killed her and it was my fault.” Ed stared at the edge of the table as he fought to blink the tears out of his eyes. “If I hadn’t told her that I killed her abusive ex-boyfriend for her she would have been alive right now.”

Jim guessed that Daughdry must have been Ed’s first victim. After Daughdry was gone, Ed gained a confidence boost; one could assume that Ed learned the ‘joy’ of holding power over another human being’s life.

Ed continued. “I showed her Daughdry’s badge to prove to her that she was safe from him, that I was not just a pushover that needed other people to help him. She jumped up and tried to escape, calling me a ‘freak’ (a word he seemed to spit out, Jim noted) and saying that she was going to turn me in and put me in a small box for the rest of my life. I pleaded with her, pining her at the neck against the door and smothering her mouth and nose.” Ed sniffed and rubbed his nose against the shoulder part of his suit. He cleared his throat, but his voice still cracked with repressed emotion. “My stupidity killed her. I wasn’t thinking straight after she seduced me, and… and…” He took a deep breath and glared back at Jim. “The one time I didn’t think cost me the woman I worked so hard to please.”

Ed smiled but small tears still snuck out of the corners of the man’s eyes. “It was the most logical thing to do. You can even find her body, it doesn’t really matter to me anymore. I hacked her body into tiny pieces, packed the parts into a cheap suitcase and buried her underneath a tree in the woods. That’s how I found Penguin dying in the woods.”

Jim could barely believe what was happening in front of him. “But Ed-“

Suddenly Nygma bolted up from his chair and grabbed Jim’s jacket, heaving him up only inches from Ed’s furious face. Jim’s mind latched onto the first riddle Ed gave when he had been handcuffed to the chair. The answer was “key.” Somehow Ed had gotten the key to the handcuffs and had unlocked himself while Jim was distracted…

“WHY DO YOU KEEP ASKING ME SUCH IDIOTIC QUESTIONS?” Nygma roared in his face. Jim couldn’t fight back, he was rooted in the spot for a reason he could not explain. Jim heard Harvey burst out of the hidden room next to them, and a split second later he heard Lee’s panicked voice carry through the door to the interrogation room. “Jim, Harvey went to get backup! Help is on the way…”

“CAN’T YOU SEE GORDON?! PUT THE PUZZLE PIECES TOGETHER FOR ONCE AND TRY TO USE THAT MINISCULE BRAIN OF YOURS! THIS IS SIMPLE PSYCHOLOGY, FOR GOD’S SAKES!”

Jim honestly didn’t want to fight Ed. He was too vulnerable, too explosive after sharing such personal feelings about himself. “Ed,” he said, praying that he could peacefully avoid the fight that was about to occur.

“NOBODY CARED ABOUT ME JIM, AND NOBODY WANTED TO CARE ABOUT ME!” Ed was practically spraying Jim’s face with spit, he was so mad. “YOU COULD HAVE PREVENTED THIS JIM GORDON, HAD YOU OR ANYONE ELSE BOTHERED TO HELP ME WHEN I WAS STRUGGLING TO KEEP A GRIP ON MY SANITY!”

Three backup cops burst in and hauled Ed off of Jim, throwing him down onto the floor. Jim violently fought back tears as Ed cried out in agony as the cops continued to beat him even after he held up his hands in surrender and dropped the handcuff key to the floor.

After a moment, Jim called out, “Enough! Just take him back to his cell.” The cops gave Ed an evil look, and Jim added forcefully, “If he is unnecessarily beaten anymore tonight, I will fire you on the charges of an unlawful use of police power. Is that clear?”

The cops nodded, and Ed looked up from the floor at Jim. He continued to stare at Jim as the three cops heaved him to his feet. As they pushed Ed past Jim, Ed nodded his head and whispered, “Thank you, Detective.” His words were flooded with nostalgic and apologetic emotion.

One of the cops stopped Ed before they got to the door. As one of the other backup cops opened the door, the smallest one snarled in Ed’s face, “What was that, Riddle freak?”

Ed stared straight into the cop’s eyes and uttered a riddle that broke Jim’s heart. “’What is everywhere and nowhere, except where something is?’”

The cop scoffed and shoved Nygma through the open door. “Whatever, you sick bastard.”

Jim knew the answer. It was the very first riddle Ed gave him, back when he was first starting out on the GCPD as a new detective. Back when he worked his first case, the Wayne case. Back when Penguin and the other Rogues hadn’t even formed yet. Back when it had been so simple and easy compared to what Jim had to go through now. Back when Ed was sweet and innocent and Jim had the nearly impossible goal to clean up Gotham’s streets. How Jim still felt then and now when it came to preventing crime and bettering Gotham. A small tear escaped Jim’s eye as he spoke the answer to the riddle, flooding his mind with bittersweet memories of his first days on the force.

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

* * *

 

_I hoped you liked it! This was first posted on[FanFiction.net](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11961245/1/A-Question-Yet-to-Be-Asked) back in May of 2016 . I've come a long way since then, but I like to show you what I was like a year or so ago._

_I will be transferring more of my stories over, and there are a few more Gotham stories included in that list._

_Thank you for reading!_

_XD_


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